


Maxwell's Demon, Occam's Razor

by completetheory



Category: Don't Starve (Video Game)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Everyone Is Gay, F/F, Fluff, Maxwell is both a god and an atheist, Maxwell read Mark Twain at some point, Philosophy, Queer Themes, Transgender, Wilson is badass, trans themes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-07
Updated: 2019-10-07
Packaged: 2020-11-27 06:02:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,139
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20943503
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/completetheory/pseuds/completetheory
Summary: Wilson and Maxwell adapt to the Constant in different ways. A short fluffy piece I wrote before A Little Enlightenment while trying to get a feel for their voices.





	Maxwell's Demon, Occam's Razor

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MadScientific](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MadScientific/gifts).

Winter's bite wasn't the only concern, but Wilson was an old hand at threat detection. When the Deerclops crashed into their camp, she was up and ready to move, throwing a backpack to Maxwell and snatching up an ax. "Come on!" 

Maxwell felt the paralysis of fear rooting her to the spot, the myopic giant roaring as it trampled the campfire with an enormous hoof. "I--"

"_Trust me._" Wilson's grip on her arm became a pull, and the puppeteer stumbled, then her body reacted automatically. Flight. Adrenaline. A frantic crashing pell-mell retreat through the woods, in the dark, following Wilson's torch and fighting the hammering of her heart in her ribs. 

_Where are we going? How can we outrun that thing? All of our supplies! I shouldn't be running--_

Wilson skidded to a stop, grabbing a rope half-buried in the snow, and tied it to another rope, across the way, the torch gripped in her teeth, and her gaze flickering to Maxwell in a manic glance that spoke volumes. 

_She's having **fun.**_

Wilson ducked under the rope and motioned for Maxwell to follow. "They really can't see well," She explained, skipping backward, lighting another torch with the first, "Here. We might get separated. Things are about to get - exciting!" 

Maxwell glanced over her shoulder, hearing that *breathing,* watching the thing come stumbling toward them, touching the rope, ripping at the nearby trees. 

_That won't stop it, though._ She thought, but Wilson's smile didn't falter. The trees - their branches were loaded with gunpowder explosive, detonating impressively and sending up a sudden wave of fire, consuming all the surrounding evergreens, and the smell of burning pine filled the night. 

And then the tree nearest them grew a face, and began a slow, inexorable march toward the cyclopic architect of deforestation. Maxwell watched in awe, barely registering Wilson circling around to head back to camp, and the taunt--.... 

"You kids play nice!"

She was fiercely in love, now.

\--

Maxwell spent a great deal of time in communion with the trees of the Constant, channeling what she claimed was the _faerie faith_, or _or ogham craobh._ Wilson had stopped believing in faeries approximately one moment after she was born, as far as she could remember, because when she was very young she had viewed all such things with deep abiding cynicism, and none of this had ever steered her wrong. 

Santa Claus wasn't real. The faeries who ran the bicuspid monetary exchange weren't, either, so why should there be living entities in the trees (treeguards aside)? And hadn't she used actual science, 'forbidden knowledge' that manifested as formulas and ...well, some blood magic. But not much. The ratio of gizmos to virgin blood sacrifice was still comfortably on the side of science.

And yet, Maxwell somehow got results, too. 

"Highly conscious rational thinking is a trap," Maxwell said, stroking the rough bark of the pine nearest herself, decked all out in woven rough cloth and with a necklace of beefalo teeth - sometimes magic was gross, just like science, and she suffered these sacrifices stoically. "Especially here. It makes you drunk, arrogant. You must channel intuitive understanding." 

"Rational thinking worked pretty well for me so far. It got you down off that throne, too." Wilson observed - rationally - stripping a sapling with a sharp rock, "I'd rather not go back to thinking lightning strikes are the product of an angry god." 

Maxwell glanced over at her, fondly. "But they are." 

"You know exactly what I mean." 

Maxwell sobered. "Yes. There is no God." She traced the veins of a living branch, leaning down to scoop the fallen twigs, and Wilson would have left it at that, but that Maxwell continued, "No universe, no human race, no earthly life, no heaven, no hell. It is all a dream – a grotesque and foolish dream. Nothing exists but you. And you are but a thought – a vagrant thought, a useless thought, a homeless thought, wandering forlorn among the empty eternities!" 

Wilson paused. "That sounds like you're quoting something." 

"It's that story Mark Twain never finished. Where God tires of being alone in the empty universe and creates 'life', a cosmic span in which he is the only real person." 

"I'm real." Wilson remarked, after a beat, "I wouldn't disagree with you so much if I wasn't."

Maxwell drew away from the tree, crouching in front of her, and her voice was husky, heavy with gravitas. "Never stop." 

Wilson wondered then if Maxwell really did fear that this was all still just a product of the phantasmagoria that had generated the Constant as they'd come to know it, with all its dread and illogical entities. But she must have known the truth, that Wilson and Wendy and Wes and all the others were as real as Maxwell herself. She was silent for a second, then, "Then keep talking about how you're all alone here, and I'll keep disagreeing. Trust in what you can perceive; the 'highly conscious rational thinking'. There's wind on your face. It's cold, isn't it? It's real enough." 

"It might be a memory." Maxwell sat on a nearby tree stump, "I remember what the wind felt like in San Francisco, even if I don't remember my own mother's face."

"--That's a complicated explanation for a simple observation. Unless you have a really good reason not to, you want to match level of observation complexity with level of explanation complexity. 'I feel the wind on my face, therefore there is a wind and I am outside'. It's better than 'I feel the wind on my face, therefore alien lifeforms could be experimenting on me to make my brain feel a false sensation.'" 

"But they could be. I never did find out what They wanted. Maybe this is all just some deeper lunacy, brought on by too much nightmare fuel."

"Maxwell." Wilson's voice was gentle, and firm, "You're not that egotistical. By what criterion, besides the existence of Them, are you calling my existence into question? What makes you believe I'm not here?"

Maxwell faltered, and Wilson could see the somewhat upsetting, fearful aura around her of too much cognitive deprivation. She did this to make full use of her talents as a conjuror of shadows, but every so often it led to things like this. 

"You're too good to be true. Your rescue, your forgiveness, your patience, your affection. You're almost ideal."

"Flattering. That's exactly what I mean." Wilson got up, and gently put a flower crown on Maxwell's head, "Here. These work wonders when you don't have time to brew tea or anything. Look how beautiful you are." 

Maxwell reached over, to take her hands in her own. "Are you - really--?" 

"Yes, I'm really here. It's okay. It's gonna be okay. No more of that stuff for a while, huh? Even you need recovery periods."

"--Yes."


End file.
